


For Two...or so

by claro



Series: What we could have been [14]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 14:41:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18317324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claro/pseuds/claro
Summary: Over the years Bill has learned to never take anything for granted when it comes to Sherlock, but even so, the detective can surprise in the sweetest of ways....sometimes





	For Two...or so

Once upon a time a former exotic dancer ran away from her abusive husband. When he died she cashed in all their savings and pensions and bought a tatty four story townhouse, long ago converted into flats by a more optimistic landlord than she was. She had the bathrooms replumbed and ripped up the grotty, stained carpet on the stairs and then she settled down in her chintz armchair and planned the rest of her life around bridge nights and bingo and baking.

And then it happened.

Gunshots in the middle of the night. Body parts in the freezer. Small explosions. Large explosions. Police raids. Arguments. Fist fights over breakfast. The doctor leaving. A baby. A...friend who stayed. Six children. A grandchild. The basement flat full of light and sound. Small feet on the stairs at all hours. The slam of the front door day and night. A hopeful face peering around the door on baking days. Laughter upstairs, always. Weddings. Hats. Small hands holding hers as they walked to the park or to bingo. Her stiff old hands learning to form words in the air. The smile she received in return. The silence.....

#

Martha Hudson was used to strange goings on in the flat upstairs. Truth be told she enjoyed it. There was always some drama, always some small child in her flat in a cloud of flour and full of vigour.

This was not the quiet retirement she had planned. It was so much better.

Hamish, Sherlock's eldest, was pacing her small kitchen, gently shushing the baby resting against his chest. Martha made tea in silence, smiling at how alike Hamish and his father were. Reminiscing about the times Sherlock had paced that same floor, Hamish in his arms. Upstairs she could hear the slamming of doors and feet crossing the wooden floors, and then her own door was flung open and slammed shut, William Murray panting slightly, red hair mussed and eyes wide.

'Please can I have a cup of tea?'

Across the room Hamish stopped his pacing and stared and then he laughed.

'What's he done this time?'

'It's not your father,' Bill said, accepting Baby Artemis and pressing a kiss to her head before taking up Hamish's pacing of the room, 'It's all your siblings.'

Hamish nodded but said nothing.

'I swear, statistically at least one of you should be normal.....Although my money's on Allegra-'

'Because she hasn't set fire to anything yet?'

Bill stopped moving and looked at his eldest son.

'That's a nice skirt.'

'Thanks, I borrowed it from Anthea.'

'Does she know you borrowed it?'

'....yes?'

'How's Bea?'

Hamish bit his lip, 'She's okay. She's tired a lot.'

Bill nodded in response and shifted Artemis in his arms.

'How did you know it was Sherlock?' Hamish asked suddenly, poised at the door as if unsure whether to run or stay.

Bill smiled, allowing himself to think back all those years to the moment he met Sherlock.

'I....uh...I just looked at him and I knew. He was alone, and had already sent several other midwifes running out in tears. So I took over and the first thing he did was kick me in the face. Oh Hamish, he called me every name you can think of, but....when I handed you to him...the way he looked at you. I would have given my life to have him look at me the way he looked at you.' Bill bit his lip hard and closed his eyes for a second, 'I fell in love with him, so hard and so fast I didn't have time to breathe. And don't get me wrong, he annoys the hell out of me and no one else I know has a contingency bail fund, but when he's holding one of you, or mixing some toxic concoction at the kitchen table, or pissing about with his bloody bees....I just look at him and I know that he's the one. He'll always be the one....no matter how many times I have to give a dodgy alibi or how many mice I have to retrieve from the the bath...he is...he is never going to look at anyone else like he looks at me...I....Do you have any idea what that....responsibility is like?'

'You really love him.' it wasn't a question.

'I really do,' Bill whispered it into Artemis's neck as she slept, 'And I love you,' this was more forceful, 'You're my son. Always. Nothing will ever change that.'

Hamish nodded and then took a breath, 'Aunt Harry says that too.'

'She does?'

'Hmm.' Hamish bit his lip, 'She says the only thing I got from John Watson was my nose.'

'Harry was right. When you were small it was like herding cats trying to keep you an Sherlock out of trouble. And when you had Beatrice in the mix....well, thank heavens for amitriptyline.'

'Daddy...'

Bill smiled again, soft and easy as he shifted his granddaughter from one arm to the other. Hamish stared back, half his hair shaved, one arm covered in a complex tattoo and the pilfered skirt loose around his knees.

'You love her, don't you?'

Hamish didn't respond, instead he looked away.

'Hamish....' Bill sighed and gently shushed the baby he was holding, 'Mish, who is Artemis's father?'

'I am!' came back the fierce return.

There was a long silence during which Bill completed several tours of the floor.

'I said the same thing to Mycroft twenty years ago.' Bill didn't look up, 'Said it to your gran too. And my dad. It didn't matter who had been there at the conception. The second.,...the SECOND I saw you my heart stopped. I knew I would never love anything as much as I loved you. The only thing that came close was your father. He was... amazing.' Bill one again buried his face against the sleeping Artemis.

'...Daddy?'

Bill straightened up and looked his eldest son straight in the eye.

'Go and tell her you love her. Tell her how much she means.'

'She knows...'

'Tell her!' Bill almost shouted and then he softened, hushing Artemis before carrying on, 'Tell her. If She's anything like her dad then she's got a mind as big as Jupiter....but....but she won't know. She'll love openly and freely because that's the Greg in her, but....but she'll never really think that.....so you tell her - you tell her how you love her and you tell her how much. It's the only way she'll know.'

Hamish nodded and then stared into the cold fire for a while, 'I...she's....'

Bill bit his lip again, 'Do it.'

There was a moment when he wasn't sure if Hamish was going to flee or not. But then the boy nodded, drew himself up to his full height, his fist clenched at his sides, and then he was gone, jaw clenched and stride determined.

'Today we are soldiers...'

'What?' Bill turned around to glare at Mrs Hudson who was dusting off her hands in the kitchen doorway.

'Nothing, just something I heard once.' Before she could elaborate there was a crash of glass from upstairs. Mrs Hudson sighed goodheartedly and held out her hands for Artemis, 'If you're heading upstairs tell the girls that On the Buses has started and bingo's been cancelled because the caller has strep throat. But Mrs Turner's coming over with her knitting and she's bringing a DVD to watch.'

Bill refrained from asking what the DVD was and instead took the stairs two at a time before he heard explosions.

#

Three days passed and Bill was standing outside 221 Baker Street. It had taken every bit of energy he had to hail the cab from work, and even then he hadn't really wanted to come home. Not because he didn't want to be there, but because he didn't want to bring how he felt into their home. Where their children slept.

He'd been a midwife since he was twenty. He'd been a consultant for nearly twenty one years. He had seen every scenario, every outcome. But days like this...days like this made it hard to look at his own children, knowing how fortunate he was, because somewhere, not too far away, someone else was going home without their baby, without their partner, and even imagining how that felt was like ripping his own heart out. The thought of not having his children, or Sherlock, or something happening...

It seemed to take hours to climb the stairs into the dark flat. If was full of the type of silence that meant no one was home. Staggering slightly he managed to cross the floor and into the bedroom he shared with Sherlock, toeing off his shoes and shrugging his coat onto the floor before doing nothing more than crawling into bed and closing his eyes against everything.

#

Bill woke with a start when he was smacked hard in the face in the early hours. As he blinked himself awake he realised it was not a hand but a flung arm of a sleepy child that had woken him.

'...'rrry,' Vivienne mumbled in her sleep and rolled over closer to Bill.

It took the Midwife a moment to realise that his daughter was not the only one to have hijacked his bed. Ptolemy was taking up most of Bill's pillow, one thumb in his mouth and his beloved stuffed rabbit clutched to his chest. A wriggle on the far edge of the bed behind him and a hissed 'shushh' alerted him to Allegra and Manus. Before he had a chance to move or speak a spare pillow hurtled across the room...Angus then.

With five of his offspring curled up in his and Sherlock's bed, Bill knew he wasn't going to get any more sleep, so after one last sticky pat on the face from Ptolemy, he eased himself out of bed and went to the kitchen, there he found Sherlock, sitting at the table, quietly scribbling in one of his endless notebooks.

'You're awake.' the detective said. It wasn't a question.

Bill pushed a tired hand through his hair, 'Hostile takeover of our bedroom.'

'Ah, yes. It would seem they watched a film last night which may have frightened them.'

Since there was very little that Bill could imagine frightening his children he took a deep breath before speaking, 'What film?'

Sherlock shrugged, 'Something about leprechauns...'

'Oh for fuck sake!' Bill hissed, 'I thought we'd banned Darby O'Gill after last time!'

Sherlock momentarily looked guilty but then he stood up, 'Would you like some tea?'

For a moment the midwife couldn't contain his surprise, and then he nodded.

'Go through and I'll bring it,' Sherlock offered, setting his pen down.

#

Several minutes later Sherlock Holmes in a move that would have surprised anyone else, carried through two cups of tea to the living room....where his husband had fallen asleep curled up on the sofa, Sherlock's ridiculous coat draped over him like a blanket. Without another word Sherlock set both cups down on the coffee table and then went back to his notebook.


End file.
